Giveaway Details
Five (5) winner's will each receive a $10 gift card to The Children's Place. This giveaway is open to Connecticut residents only and will end at 12:00AM on August 24, 2013. Please use the Rafflecopter form below. Good luck!

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

It is no surprise to this mom that Skylanders is the top action figure line in North America. Why am I not surprised? Because right now I am staring at 42 of them sprawled out in front of my television. My boys definitely love Skylanders, even the three year old. If you are not familiar with either of the video games, be sure to check out my reviews of Skylanders Spyro's Adventure and Skylanders Giants.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Westfield provided compensation to facilitate our back to school shopping experience. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The school year is almost upon us here in Connecticut which means parents and children everywhere are heading to the malls for some back-to-school shopping. Now while I normally love shopping, having four young boys to buy for can be a little daunting for a few reasons. The biggest of course is price. I have four growing bodies to outfit and four sets of supplies to tackle and the cost adds up super fast. The other problem is doing the actual shopping with four children because let’s be serious here, kids do not have the patience for shopping. Nor do husbands, I recently learned. However, shopping at the Westfield Connecticut Post Mall made the entire experience easier for us.

On Friday, August 16 Westfield invited me to their Connecticut Post location in Milford, Connecticut for a $250 back-to-school shopping spree and to experience their Best of B2S shopping event. During this event, some of the stores were running back to school sales, the mall hosted family-friendly shows and events plus there was an Unlock to Win giveaway! Over in the center court of the mall there was a locker setup and you could then text to receive a code to try to open the locker for some great prizes like an iPad Mini! I would have loved to win another iPad since I am somewhat gadget obsessed.

The first store we headed to was The Children’s Place, who was a participant in the Best of B2S event. Armed with my gift card and a 20% coupon, I was ready to do some damage. I decided to let the boys each pick out a couple of shirts. We were looking through the long and short sleeve graphic tees when we spotted a table full of character tees. I don’t think I ever noticed they had these before and they all put down the shirts they were looking at and headed over to that table. They had an awesome selection of Star Wars, LEGO Ninjago, Super Mario Bros., Marvel Superheroes and more.

Generally, I shy away from licensed character t-shirts because they are more expensive. However, The Children’s Place was having a sale and these were marked down to $10 plus I had my coupon. So in the end they cost me $8 a piece which is awesome for the combined character aspect plus The Children’s Place quality. If I would have let them, my kids would have bought every single shirt they had. But I had more shopping to do.

So I walked out of the store with 8 shirts and spent only $63 and I received $20 Place Cash for a future purchase. Plus with every Disney or Marvel shirt you bought, you got a free Phineas & Ferb school kit, which was a cute bonus. And yes if you look at the shirts we got, you will totally notice a “one of these things is not like the other” shirt mixed in there. The cute butterfly tee is for my 4 year old niece whom I adore. She is the only little girl in my life that I can buy stuff for so I indulge myself every now and then.

After we were finished at The Children’s Place, it was time for our lunch break. We headed over to the food court to figure out what to eat. With some pizza and salad from Sbarro’s and burgers, chicken tenders and a hot dog from Johnny Rockets, we sat down to devour our meal. We don’t do fast food often, so this is a special treat for us. And thankfully the food court here has a ton of seating so we had no problem finding a quiet spot for ourselves.

I mentioned earlier that Westfield was hosting some kid-friendly shows during their Best of B2S event and the show for this day was Spider-man. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect show for my superhero obsessed family. We watched Spider-man come down from the upper level and make his way through the crowd of kids gathered around the stage. Spider-man joked around with the kids and parents and then started a discussion about “Being Buddies and Not Bullies”. With crowd participation, he discussed the things kids can do if they are being bullied in school or anywhere really. This is such an important issue and I was thrilled that Westfield used a popular, fun character to talk to kids about this topic.

My final stop of the day was at my favorite store: Target. I love Target because I can find anything and everything I need there and for a great price. Which often means I walk out of the store with way more items than I intended to buy. On our shopping list for Target were some school supplies, some household items and a few t-shirts for mom. Hey, mom deserves back to school clothes too doesn’t she? After all the hard work parents go through to get their kids ready for school, they certainly deserve a little reward themselves. I actually didn’t get to spend as much time in Target as I would have liked because not only were the kids getting whiny by this point in the afternoon, but so was dad. So I sped through to the best of my ability.

I also came prepared with Target coupons plus my iPad with the new Target Cartwheel app. If you shop at Target, you need to download this app as it gives you additional coupons on top of print coupons and in store sales. In the end we ended up with 2 backpacks for the twins (who begged and pleaded), some markers and crayons, a notebook for my blogging, hangers for their new shirts, straws, a PUR filter for our fridge, kid’s toothpaste, cologne for dad and two shirts for me. Oh and because my boys were such good sports throughout the entire day, I let them get a new Skylanders figure. After The Children’s Place and lunch, we finished up our gift card here and the Target Cartwheel app saved me an additional $15 off my purchases.

Overall we had an awesome shopping experience at the Westfield Connecticut Post Mall. The amount of stores that are at this mall can be a little overwhelming at first, but if you have a shopping plan in place you should be good to go. And if you are shopping with the kiddies, don’t forget to check out the playspace on the lower level so they can burn off some of their energy and then hopefully nap on the way home. Even though the Best of B2S event is now over, there are still stores who are having back to school sales.

Sweepstakes
Now through August 31st you can go to the Westfield Connecticut Post Facebook page and enter to win $1,000 for back to school shopping at the Westfield Connecticut Post Mall.

Monday, August 19, 2013

As you know, I've teamed up with National Wildlife Federation's Be
Out There movement and The Motherhood to encourage families to spend
time outdoors, even in the summer heat. Some amazing parent bloggers contributed to an e-book packed with great ideas for fun-filled summer days and nights with
your kids! Using the e-book as a resource, you can say goodbye to summer
boredom, as you'll have plenty of activities for all different
occasions to suggest for kids of all ages.

To celebrate the launch of our awesome Be Out There eBook, join us for a fun Twitter party tomorrow! In addition to getting some tips for getting the kids outside you will also have a chance to win prizes. Check out all of the details below.

What: We're celebrating the
release of this remarkable e-book with a Twitter party! Join us to chat
about tips for being out there, and share new ones of your own.
Getting outside can be fun for the whole family, but sometimes we just
need some inspiration from other like-minded moms.

Friday, August 16, 2013

A&E is kicking off its new series, Modern Dads, with an interactive East Coast road tour this August leading up to the series premiere on August 21st. Parents and their kids are invited to check out the Modern Dads RV for a fun-filled family event. You'll be able to have your family photo taken for free, check out the ultimate Modern Dads "man cave," and walk away with Modern Dads swag including sidewalk chalk, bubbles for the kids, and more. Check out the remaining tour dates here: www.aetv.com/modern-dads/mobile-tour.

On Wednesday, August 14 the Modern Dads Road Tour rolled into Agawam, Massachusetts to hang out at Six Flags New England. Since this isn't too far from me, about 90 minutes, I loaded up my 4 boys into the minivan, dragged my mom along for the ride and we made our way there. When we arrived we headed straight for the Modern Dads RV.

After we met some of their road crew and checked out the outside of the RV, we were invited inside to poke around and take a free family photo. There are plenty of props and toys for the kids to use in the picture. Mine chose guitars and a baseball hat.

And yes, Dad was in fact at work, which is why Grammy got suckered into joining us.Not only do they email the photo to you pretty much instantly, but they will also print out a couple of copies while you are waiting in the RV.

Of course once we parted ways with the cool RV, we tore up the amusement park. This was the first time my kids have ever been here and the first time for me since before my oldest was even born. So yeah, it had been a while. We had a blast. There are 2 separate areas dedicated to child rides and that is where we spent most of our time. My eight year old is just on the cusp of being tall enough for real roller coasters so I have a feeling a trip with dad here next year will be happening.

We ended up having beautiful weather and just a perfect family day at Six Flags New England.

About Modern Dads
Modern Dads features four stay-at-home dads who while little unconventional, get the job done. Banding together, their "guys club" is a tribe of suburban, child-rearing dudes who are just trying to do their thing… with a kid (or four) on their hip. The new series will follow their exploits as they navigate their lives; juggling the requirements and social expectations of being both a "modern man" and "modern dad" while their significant others are off at work.

Modern Dads premiers on A&E on August 21, 2013 at 10:30/9:30c. Be sure to tune in!

Thank you to A&E and Modern Dads for providing complimentary passes to Six Flags New England for my family so we could enjoy the Modern Dads Tour and the park.

In my section, I discussed ideas for summer nighttime activities with your kids. Here is a snippet of what I wrote about:

One of our eight year old’s favorite activities is star gazing. We head out onto our deck with his telescope and my iPad to sit down and wait for the stars to appear. A child’s telescope might not be super strong, but they still like looking at the moon and stars through it. The perfect accompaniment to this is using a constellation app on your mobile device. For 99 cents I downloaded the Night Sky app onto my iPad and it was money very well spent. We just hold it up to the sky and the app will show us which stars and planets we are looking at as well as outlining the constellations. If you start your star gazing around twilight, only a few stars may be visible. Those are the brightest ones. For us, the only star we could see initially was Vega (thank you app for telling us the name!). As the sky darkened, more stars seemed to pop up. My son was really excited every time he spotted a new star. Ultimately, watching the stars and learning about them proved to be a great activity not only for the kids, but us parents as well.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Next week the Modern Dads Tour will be visiting New England and if you are in the area, you can join in on some fun! They tricked out an RV and created a fun-filled interactive experience traveling on the East Coast! Here is where they will be:

Location: Pawtucket Red Sox Game at The McCoy Stadium
Address: 1 Columbus Ave Pawtucket, RI 02860
Date: Thursday, August 15th
Truck will be on site @5:30pm
Game Time: 7:05PM

Modern Dads on A&E features four stay-at-home dads who while little unconventional, they get the job done. Banding together, their "guys club" is a tribe of suburban, child-rearing dudes who are just trying to do their thing… with a kid (or four) on their hip. The new series will follow their exploits as they navigate their lives; juggling the requirements and social expectations of being both a "modern man" and "modern dad" while their significant others are off at work. The Modern Dads series premier is August 21st at 10:30/9:30c.

I love the idea behind this show and being able to see dads in the role that I fill every single day. It should definitely be interesting and I am hoping somewhat humorous. :) Myself and my lucky family are going to get a chance to check out the special Modern Dads RV as it rolls into Six Flags New England. You can be sure I will report back about it all!

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